Choices

My two babies were both home today. One's babyhood is much behind him, another is pulling out of hers as fast as she can cruise. I first saw each baby at nine weeks along, a tiny blob with a flickery heart beat. First felt them at around 14 weeks, the first quickening of life. First felt their effects on my body even earlier than that.

Long before the time it's still legal to abort them.

I've always been pro-choice. And I thought somehow that becoming a mother would make me more so. I know the perils of pregnancy and the pain of motherhood: I know very well that no one should be forced to go through either without expressly wanting it. It's not fair to the mother, and not fair to the child. If you are to sacrifice your life for another human being, you have to want to do it. Otherwise all you end up with is resentment.

I still believe that.

But for the first time in my life, I understand the pro-life argument. While I used to passionately argue against the personhood of the fetus (if it cannot survive on its own, it's not a person. It's still part of the mother. Ergo, her decision), it's so very hard to argue that with the same vehemence when I saw those tiny blobs, and they became the two people next to me on the couch. It's a life. It's potential. And the idea of terminating that is horrifying. Sick-to-the-stomach nauseating, panic inducing. Wrong.

But.

There's an article on today's CBC on Robert Latimer. For those of you not living in Canada 20 years ago, this man was convicted of the mercy killing of his severely disabled daughter. He still argues his right, his actions were merciful and borne of love. But the fact is that he took a life that many argue he had no right to take.

I don't condone killing another human being. Especially now that I've created two. I can't imagine ever doing it, and should I ever find myself pregnant again at a time when I cannot be pregnant for one reason or another, I can't imagine terminating it even so.

But. There's always a but.

The fact is that I'm not in that situation. And I'm not in the shoes of another woman who is pregnant and needs to terminate. I wasn't in Robert Latimer's shoes 20 years ago, watching his daughter suffer and watching her quality of life deteriorate. I can't judge. 


So that is why, despite seeing the tiny flickering heartbeats of my babies, I will still defend another woman's right to choose. I'm not her, I don't live her life, I don't know what desperation drove her to her decision, any more than I know what it is to watch your disabled child suffer. And I pray I never do. If there is any kind of God, I believe that instead of condemning those faced with those decisions, He would instead lay a hand on them in benediction, for having had to face one of life's worst possible decisions.